


dancing bears, painted wings

by amortentiaus



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Angst, F/M, Just a drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 21:54:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14724266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amortentiaus/pseuds/amortentiaus
Summary: Beatrice's thoughts at the VFD party.





	dancing bears, painted wings

If these were to be my final thoughts, then they would be of the man I adored and that I wish I'd worn a coat. The mountain was awfully cold.

My Lemony. How I love him, more than I could ever love myself. I didn't consider myself a fanatical poet, but he was the moon to my sun and every glimmer of starlight in the night sky. Even as the ground beneath my feet shifted, he kept me stable, kept me alive against the earthquakes. 

I wished I could tell him all that. I wished for a thousand things that I would never have, like a future with the ring on my finger, and a home for us to live in together. I wished for so many things some might think me self centered, but I was just lovesick. In love with the sickness we fell under together.

What fools love had made us, to think for even a moment that we were safe.

I looked at the stars shining over the mountaintop, and I thought that this would be the last time I ever saw them. Behind me, a clock struck eight and I knew it would be only moments before Olaf would appear. I could not blame him, would not blame him. He was so young and so full of potential and I had ripped that from him, I had killed it.

I deserved my death. I just wished - that silly word again - to see Lemony one more time. Maybe we could laugh and pretend that everything was okay, that our lives weren't falling apart at the seams.

His voice pulled me from my final thoughts, and I turned eagerly to the sound of him. My heart dropped suddenly, realization sinking in that he of all people would be the one to watch it happen. I couldn't save him.

"Beatrice!" He called urgently. I thought of the first time he'd ever said my name, just after our first handshake when we were 11. 

"Beatrice." He'd said. "It's very nice to make your acquaintance." What a unique boy, I'd known then, in all my childish glory.

"Beatrice!" He tried again. I fixed my eyes on him, wanting my last sight to be of him. I could feel Olaf approaching, feel his presence. I hardly payed him attention. "Count Olaf is-!"

My stomach dropped. My head went whirling. His cold hands gripped my shoulders and shoved with all his might and in his eyes I could see angry tears. They were the tears of a man who'd given up pretending to be good and all he wanted was revenge.

Wind whipped past my ears and I fell for what felt like years. I grew old in those years, lived a life worth living as the stars blurred. I made memories with the moon and let the cold air embrace me as a lover. I died before I even died.

Then something peculiar happened. Something I hadn't anticipated.

I thought of something my dear friend Kit had told me, ages ago in another life. We sat drinking tea and watching a snowstorm brew outside our window, comforted by the presence of someone who understood what we were going through. Kit was always just that, among other admirable traits: comforting.

I'd inquired to her how she'd managed to persist through all the trouble and adversity hot on her tail. She'd simply smiled in a very Snicket way I'd grown to love, sipped her drink, and told me: "Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive." 

Kit was as comforting as she was damaged as she was courageous. She'd been to hell and back and lived to tell the story but had only coyly smiled at me that evening in December, many years ago, and quoted an author she liked.

I caused damage and I was damaged. Could I survive? If I didn't then surely Olaf would win. He would kill Beatrice Anwhistle and would kill everyone involved in the murder of his parents. He wouldn't stop until everything was blazing, until my loved ones lied in their graves next to me. I could not let him, and would never forgive myself if something were to happen to them because of my death.

I thought him blazing mad. This wasn't the end to my story, not by a long shot. My arms raised above my head.

My final thoughts were not of a man high above me, weeping for my death, or another man rushing to find where his brother had run off. They weren't even of what would become of the boy who pushed me off a balcony and how badly I'd destroyed him.

I think I'll never know what my real final thoughts will be before they happen. But for now-

I can't go on. I'll go on.

**Author's Note:**

> And she rose.
> 
> This ficlet stemmed from a conversation I had with a friend where we questioned how Beatrice didn't see Olaf clearly approaching her. I suggested that maybe she was anticipating him and thought she deserved whatever he was going to do, letting herself be pushed, to which my friend wondered why she bothered to save herself in the end then, and my response was "Because that would be selfish."
> 
> Title is from Once Upon a December from Anastasia. Thanks for reading!


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